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Scientific Models Are Not Fictions

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Scientific Models Are Not Fictions Scientific Models Are Not Fictions Model-Based Science as Epistemic Warfare Lorenzo Magnani I seem to discern the firm belief that in [natural] philosophizing one must support oneself upon the opinion of some celebrated au- thor, as if our minds ought to remain completely sterile and barren unless wedded to the reasoning of some other person. Possibly he [Lothario Sarsi] thinks that [natural] philosophy is a book of fiction by some writer, like the Iliad or Orlando Furioso, productions in which the least important thing is whether what is written there is true. Well, Sarsi, that is not how matters stand. [Natural] Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures with- out which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth. Galileo Galilei, The Assayer Abstract. In the current epistemological debate scientific models are not only con- sidered as useful devices for explaining facts or discovering new entities, laws, and theories, but also rubricated under various new labels: from the classical ones, as abstract entities and idealizations, to the more recent, as fictions, surrogates, credi- ble worlds, missing systems, make-believe, parables, functional, epistemic actions, revealing capacities. The paper discusses these approaches showing some of their epistemological inadequacies, also taking advantage of recent results in cognitive science. The main aim is to revise and criticize fictionalism, also reframing the re- ceived idea of abstractness and ideality of models with the help of recent results coming from the area of distributed cognition (common coding) and abductive cog- nition (manipulative). The article also illustrates how scientific modeling activity can be better described taking advantage of the concept of “epistemic warfare”, which sees scientific enterprise as a complicated struggle for rational knowledge in which it is crucial to distinguish epistemic (for example scientific models) from non epistemic (for example fictions, falsities, propaganda) weapons. Finally I will illus- trate that it is misleading to analyze models in science by adopting a confounding Lorenzo Magnani Department of Arts and Humanities, Philosophy Section and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy and Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, P.R. China e-mail: [email protected] L. Magnani and P. Li (Eds.): Philosophy and Cognitive Science, SAPERE 2, pp. 1–38. springerlink.com c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 [email protected] 2 L. Magnani mixture of static and dynamic aspects of the scientific enterprise. Scientific models in a static perspective (for example when inserted in a textbook) certainly appear fictional to the epistemologist, but their fictional character disappears in case a dy- namic perspective is adopted. A reference to the originative role of thought exper- iment in Galileo’s discoveries and to usefulness of Feyerabend’s counterinduction in criticizing the role of resemblance in model-based cognition is also provided, to further corroborate the thesis indicated by the article title. 1 Introduction Current epistemological analysis of the role models in science is often philosoph- ically unproblematic and misleading. Scientific models are now not only con- sidered as useful ways for explaining facts or discovering new entities, laws, and theories, but are also rubricated under various new labels: from the clas- sical ones, abstract entities [Giere, 1988; Giere, 2009; Giere, 2007] and ide- alizations [Portides, 2007; Weisberg, 2007; Mizrahi, 2011], to the more re- cent, fictions [Fine, 2009; Woods, 2010; Woods and Rosales, 2010b; Con- tessa, 2010; Frigg, 2010a; Frigg, 2010b; Frigg, 2010c; Godfrey-Smith, 2006; Godfrey-Smith, 2009; Woods and Rosales, 2010a; Su´arez, 2009a; Su´arez, 2010], surrogates [Contessa, 2007], credible worlds [Sugden, 2000; Sugden, 2009; Kuorikoski and Lehtinen, 2009], missing systems [M¨aki, 2009; Thomson-Jones, 2010], as make-believe [Frigg, 2010a; Frigg, 2010b; Frigg, 2010c; Toon, 2010], para- bles [Cartwright, 2009b], as functional [Chakravartty, 2010], as epistemic actions [Magnani, 2004a; Magnani, 2004b], as revealing capacities [Cartwright, 2009a].This proliferation of explanatory metaphors is amazing, if we consider the huge quantity of knowledge on scientific models that had already been produced both in epistemol- ogy and in cognitive science. Some of the authors mentioned above are also engaged in a controversy about the legitimacy especially of speaking of fictions in the case of scientific models. Even if the above studies related to fictionalism have increased knowledge about some aspects of the role of models in science, I am convinced that sometimes they have also generated some philosophical confusion and it seems to me correct (fol- lowing the suggestion embedded in the title of a recent paper) “to keep quiet on the ontology of models” [French, 2010], and also to adopt a more skeptical theoretical attitude. I think that, for example, models can be considered fictions or surrogates, but this just coincides with a common sense view, which appears to be philosophi- cally empty or, at least, delusory. Models are used in a variety of ways in scientific practice, they can also work as mediators between theory and experiment [Portides, 2007], as pedagogical devices, for testing hypotheses, or for explanatory functions [Bokulich, 2011], but these last roles of models in science are relatively well-known and weakly disputed in the epistemological literature. In this paper I will concentrate on scientific models in creative abductive cognitive processes, which I still consider the central problem of current epistemological research [Hintikka, 1998]. [email protected] Scientific Models Are Not Fictions 3 I think that models, both in scientific reasoning and in human perception, are neither mere fictions, simple surrogates or make-believe, nor they are unproblem- atic idealizations; in particular, models are never abstract, contrarily to the received view.1 In the meantime I aim at substantiating my critique to fictionalism also out- lining the first features of my own approach to the role of scientific models in terms of what I call “epistemic warfare”, which sees scientific enterprise as a compli- cated struggle for rational knowledge in which it is crucial to distinguish epistemic (for example scientific models) from non epistemic (for example fictions, falsities, propaganda, etc.) weapons.2 I certainly consider scientific enterprise a complicated epistemic warfare, so that we could plausibly expect to find fictions in this struggle for rational knowledge. Are not fictions typical of any struggle which characterizes the conflict of human coalitions of any kind? During the Seventies of the last century Feyerabend [Feyerabend, 1975] clearly stressed how, despite their eventual success, the scientist’s claims are often far from being evenly proved, and accompanied by “propaganda [and] psychological tricks in addition to whatever intellectual reasons he has to offer” (p. 65), like in the case of Galileo. These tricks are very useful and efficient, but one count is the epistemic role of reasons scientist takes advantage of, such as scientific models, which for example directly govern the path to provide a new intelligibility of the target systems at hand, another count is the extra-epistemic role of propaganda and rhetoric, which only plays a mere – positive or negative – ancillary role in the epistemic warfare. So to say, these last aspects support scien- tific reasoning providing non-epistemic weapons able for example to persuade other scientists belonging to a rival “coalition” or to build and strengthen the coalition in question, which supports a specific research program, for example to get funds. I am neither denying that models as idealizations and abstractions are a pervasive and permanent feature of science, nor that models, which are produced with the aim of finding the consequences of theories – often very smart and creative – are very important. I just stress that the “fundamental” role played by models in science is the one we find in the core conceptual discovery processes, and that these kinds of models cannot be indicated as fictional at all, because they are constitutive of new scientific frameworks and new empirical domains.3 1 This does not mean that the standard epistemological concept of abstract model is devoid of sense, but that it has to be considered in a Pickwickian sense. 2 The characteristic feature of epistemic weapons is that they are value-directed to the aim of promoting the attainment of scientific truth, for example through predictive and empirical accuracy, simplicity, testability, consistency, etc.: in this perspective I basically agree with the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values as limpidly depicted in [Steel, 2010]. 3 In this last sense the capacity of scientific models to constitute new empirical domains and so new knowability is ideally related to the emphasis that epistemology, in the last century, put on the theory-ladenness of scientific facts (Hanson, Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn): in this light, the formulation of observation statements presupposes significant knowledge, and the search for new observability in science is guided by scientific modeling. On this issue cf. also [Bertolotti, 2012], this
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